Tribulations
by Rebellious Turk
Summary: Cloud is mourning the loss of Tifa, and has once again shut himself off from those around him. She doesn't agree with this, and goes to the church to convince him to come home. Slightly Cloud/OC.


_**A/N:**_ This was another request by The Killing Question. For the record, I'm a huge CloTi fan, but I made an exception in this case, seeing as she's the reason I got back into writing Final Fantasy fanficiton. This is slight Cloud/OC. It's not exactly what I planned, but the thing took on a life of its own. I'm contemplating turning it into a full blown story. If I do, this would probably be an excerpt from later chapters. I'm not very happy with where it ended, but I knew that if I didn't stop there, I wouldn't have been able to find another half-way decent stopping point for a while. If enough people really want more, I'll go ahead and write up another chapter. In the meantime, I'm going to plan out the full story and start from the beginning. The title, for those who don't know, means "sever suffering" or "an affliction." The meaning pertains to both Cloud and the OC, for reasons you shall learn while reading. Enjoy~

**_Disclaimer:_** I own nothing but the laptop I write on, (which is technically my parents, but you get the point) my OC, and my plot.

* * *

She found him in the church. _Of course,_ she thought. This was his sanctuary. He always came here to get away- from the world, from the pain, from everyone and everything that was trying to both help and hurt him. She watched him for a moment. He was staring, unseeing, into the water below him. He was resting on the edge, a lone flower sticking up out of the ground beside him.

He hadn't been the same lately. _Ever since…_

"What are you doing here, Kally?" His voice cut through the air, interrupting her thoughts. She placed her hands on her hips, glaring at his back. Yet, she said nothing. Something about this seemed so familiar. Like the words had been spoken to her before, but not quite the same way. The name… Her name was wrong, she knew.

She was fairly certain she had not been born "Kal." Then again, anything was possible, considering she had no idea who she was. They, Avalanche- her saviors and best friends- had found her just outside of Kalm over a year ago. She had been lying there, the only injury on her body a large gash on the back of her head. When she had woken up, she had no memory of her life before.

Later on, while trying to determine what they should call her, someone had joked they name her after the town they had found her. Eventually, the name "Kal" was formed, and it stuck. Yuffie had been the first to call her "Kally," and since then the others had used it several time. Kally May, Cid had been caught saying on more than one occasion. He said the "M" came from the missing letter in her name. Kal M. She had laughed at that.

She wasn't laughing now. Nobody had laughed in a long, long time. She took a hesitant step forward, memories still tugging at the far corners of her mind, just out of reach.

"Cloud…" she called softly. She wanted to be here for him. She wanted to comfort him, and make him see that she was here to help- that he could tell her how much it hurt, how much he missed _her, _and she'd listen with an open heart and an open mind. They could share the hurt, she wanted to tell him. But he was Cloud, and Cloud suffered alone.

She narrowed her eyes. _Oh no,_ she thought, this _has gone on too long._ Yes, mourning a lost loved on was important. But there came a point where if one was not given a sharp, potentially painful wakeup call (or slap in the face, whichever worked best) they would wallow forever in depression and be lost to all. She didn't want to- _couldn't_- lose Cloud.

"You're being kinda selfish, you know," she snapped. He didn't react. "Yeah, Tifa's death sucks. But that was over a month ago. And you're still not talking about it." She marched right up to him, but he refused to look up at her. "Damnit, Cloud! You think that nobody else is suffering? You think this is easy for us? Tifa was our friend too! The only difference is that we're talking about the pain! We're not shutting ourselves off to the world and blaming ourselves for something that _wasn't our fault _and _couldn't have been stopped." _

She kneeled down, careful not to get her long, red hair in the water. It had grown so long… She hadn't cut it at all, save for the occasional trimming. Her hand skimmed the water, and she enjoyed the soothing effect it had on her. She had heard this water had healing properties, and it had held true to it for her. It never failed to calm the raging emotions within her and help her sort out her thoughts. Just as it was doing now.

She sighed, wondering idly why the water never seemed to help the man next to her.

"I should have been there." His voice was so low, so quiet that she almost hadn't heard him. She instantly felt her anger melt away, replaced by understanding. She would later wonder why she felt so sympathetic, but now wasn't the time.

"Cloud," she began again, much softer this time. "There was no way you could have known. If you're going to be angry at anyone, be angry at the men that shot her." Brief flashes of blood stained walls filled her mind, but she shoved them away. Those nightmares could wait.

"If I had been at the bar with her, she wouldn't be dead." His voice, so lifeless, so hollow, scared her. She was starting to worry that she was too late to save him- that his mind was already lost to the endless abyss of darkness that loomed behind pain and loss.

"You can't know that," she countered. "Even if you had been there, you may not have been able to save her."

He shook his head. "Kal… I can't save them." She tilted her head, confused by his words. He continued, voice still devoid of any emotion. "The people I care about most… I can't save them."

She looked down into the water, unsure of how she could answer that. It was tempting to deny it, but where was her proof? Yeah, he'd saved the world a few times, but in the end he had still lost three people he had cared for deeply. First Zack, then Aeris, and now Tifa.

"Maybe… if I don't get close to anybody, I won't have to watch them die." She looked away. He was doing it again. Tifa had told her that after Aeris' death, he had isolated himself from everyone around him. And here he was again, doing just that. She began thinking, trying to remember if she had lost anyone important to her. Besides Tifa, that was.

She, like the others, had received word of Tifa's tragic death through the Turks. It had upset her that Cloud hadn't told them, but had, instead, attempted to track down those responsible for the demise of his childhood friend. She had been numb for a few days, the world passing by her in a strange blur of grays and noise.

After that, she, and the rest of the members of what was once considered a terrorist organization, began trying to locate Cloud. The funeral wouldn't have been right without him. They had been unsuccessful, yet somehow he had still showed up to watch the ceremony.

She wasn't sure why, but the idea of bodies actually disappearing like that was rather strange and disturbing. She felt that they should stay, and rot slowly. It seemed like Tifa's spirit had stayed long enough for them to give her one final goodbye before evaporating in an eerie green light.

When she realized that she had been silently lost in thought, Kal looked down. "You're so selfish." He looked at her, his bright blue eyes clouded behind a mask of suffering. She knew that her words, harsh as they were, probably felt like knives against his already wounded conscious. Yet she knew that he needed this; her inner voice told her that this was the only way to make him _see. _See that he was hurting them- hurting her.

"You think you're helping us by staying away? That's the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. You're just thinking of yourself. You can't deal with the pain, so you're going to make us suffer in return? How can you do that to us?" And then, she added, for now reason that she could possible fathom, in a voice so small that she hardly believed that it had escaped her lips, "To me?"

"Kally…"

She shook her head, thankful she wasn't the type of girl to get all weepy at these situations. "If you think that isolating yourself here is going to save us, think again. When our time comes, it comes. We'll die. It's just how life is. So learn to accept that, or you're going to go nuts- if you haven't already. The only difference is, if you're not there, then there's one less person to love us while we're alive; one less person to miss us when we're gone.

"It's not fair to us to deprive us of the chance to know you, Cloud. If you hadn't come back the first time, you and Tifa wouldn't have realized how you really felt about each other. She would have spent day after day wondering if you two were meant to be or not. Because you came back and let her in, gave yourselves a chance, you realized that you were just good friends. Because you came back, Cloud, she didn't have to suffer from not having that knowledge."

She got up, feeling the need to stretch her legs, to move. Pacing usually helped calm her nerves, she had discovered.

"She loved you, you know. Maybe not romantically," she added quickly, before he could say anything in protest. "But she did care about you- a lot. You meant everything to her." She rounded on him now, staring straight at him so that he would better get the full effect of her words. "Do you think she'd be happy, if she could see you now? Do you think this is what she would have wanted you to do with your life?"

She paced again, listening to the soft click of her boots against the wooden floor. A soft breeze passed through the church. It was strange to think that the wind could carry emotion, but that was what this felt like to her. It was as if someone agreed with her actions and was encouraging her to continue. Then again, she was probably just really worked up and not focusing- again.

"She would have wanted you to be happy, Cloud. She would have wanted you to celebrate her life and remember all of the good things she did."

Cloud said nothing; she hadn't expected him too. The only sound in the church was that of their breathing- hers surprisingly calm and steady, his barely audible but slightly labored. She was getting tired of her little speech, and was running out of things to say as well. She didn't know if anything she was saying was even getting through to him, or why she was trying so hard.

Finally, she decided to leave, but not before saying one last thing to him. "Marlene and Denzel need you too, Cloud. You and Tifa were the only parents that the boy ever had, and Marlene thought of Tifa as a mother. Don't make them orphans again, Cloud." (She knew the Marlene had Barret, who was technically her adopted father, yet the girl still viewed Cloud as a father, and it helped to further her point, or so she hoped.)

She had only taken a few, short steps when the steady tapping against the rooftop began. A moment later, water flooded the church as the rain began to pour. She stared at the offending droplets in horror. _Of all the days to walk here…_

She was torn between wanting to leave the church and just walk through the rain and staying here, knowing full well that her presence wasn't welcomed. _This didn't work so well last time,_ her inner voice chided, effectively confusing her. She stood there, wondering just _when _she had done something like this. Perhaps in her other life?

There was a sudden warmth in the church, as if a kind spirit had decided to grace them with her presence and chase away their sorrow. She shook her head, mentally scolding herself for having such ridiculous thoughts. When people died, they stayed dead. They didn't go meddling around in the lives of the living. Such things were irrational, impossible, and above all, impractical.

She didn't realize it until it was gone, but that warmth had affected her too. Once it had faded, dim in her memory like a dream, she realized the peace and comforting it had brought.

She shook her head, wondering what on the planet was wrong with her. There was something about this church that always made her think such odd things. She realized then that she had just been standing there, and silence- save for the steady dropping of water- had taken over. She had once again only taken a few steps before something stopped her.

"Kally." Cloud's voice was sharp and clear, as if he had formed a sudden epiphany in the last thirty seconds and had gotten over his depression. Then again, this was Cloud. And Cloud was prone to sudden mood swings.

"I'll take you home," he said, standing up. His hair was slightly wet, water droplets covering his face.

She nodded, smiling. There was something different in his eyes, she noted as she followed him out of the church. Life was beginning to fight its way through the dull emptiness that had previously controlled them. She knew that he was still far from okay, but he was willing to try. And it was enough for her.


End file.
